Tag Archive: home fitness

Getting fit doesn’t necessarily require a gym – in fact, it’s actually better to get in shape without needing to rely on a gym. If you feel as though you HAVE to go to the gym, then what are you going to do if your car doesn’t work, or if you have to be at home for one reason or another?

Learning to get fit at home can be your greatest asset. In fact, you’ll find that you need very little to get in shape:

Adjustable Dumbbells

A pair of adjustable dumbbells is an amazing investment if you want to work out at home. You’ll find that a top-notch pair will run you about $200 or $300. If you’re looking for a bargain, you can find one on Craigslist or eBay. Two adjustable dumbbells – adjustable from 5 to 50 pounds each – is more than enough weight to get you into awesome shape!

Resistance Bands

If you’re sick and tired of lifting weights, why not try resistance bands? You can still do many of the classic bodybuilding exercises, but without the annoyingly heavy weights in your hands. The bands will be much easier on your wrists, and you can still get an awesome workout.

Of course, you will need a complete set – which will only run you about $100 – but it will allow you to do almost all of the exercises you’d do with free weights and machines at the gym. In fact, you’ll find that resistance bands are much more versatile than any machine, and they’re so much more you-friendly than those thick, heavy metal bars!

Home Gym

A weight set can be a costly investment, but you can actually make your own home gym for peanuts…if you’re smart about it! Building a weight bench can be very cheap, though you’ll need to be sure that it’s strong enough to hold your weight plus the weight you’re lifting. You can use pretty much any metal bar as your barbell, and weight discs can be made with concrete – using buckets, tin cans, and water jugs as your mold. You can build your own frames for dips, pull-ups, and leg lifts without spending a fortune, and your sweet home gym is ready for you to work out!

Exercise Program

One of the cheapest ways to get in shape at home is to use an exercise program like Beach Body. The Power 90 program will get you started, P90X will take your fitness to the next level, and Insanity will get you ripped! There are many video-based fitness programs you can use to get in shape, and you’ll be able to work your entire body out thanks to these programs. They cost less than $100, and they’re the total package!

See, there’s no need to hit a gym when you can get in shape in your own home!

Most cardio routines are low intensity – meaning that you don’t really challenge your heart and lungs. And so your body actually gets used to the training. In effect, you’re not really doing anything to push your body to improve when you keep performing the same routine at the same intensity level.

Reason #3: You’ll Look Anorexic

Aerobic exercise does nothing to make lean and strong. Look at the difference between sprinters and distance runners. Sprinters are lean, strong, and powerful. Distance athletes on the other hand, look like anorexics (well, not all of them).

Now here are 5 reasons to start doing higher-intensity cardio:

Reason #1: You’ll Gain Muscle

Short, intense workouts burns glycogen stores in muscles as fuel, rather than fat. This teaches your body to store more energy in your muscles rather than fat. The result is more muscle gain, and less fat gain. In fact, you’ll notice a considerable decrease in fat.

Reason #2: You’ll be Healthier

Individuals who workout at a higher intensity level have lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides, higher HDL cholesterol (the good kind), and less body fat.

Reason #3: You’ll Run Longer

Short bursts of exercise actually improves your aerobic conditioning. I noticed this when after 3 months of high intensity kettlebell workouts, I went for a run for the first time in close 8 months. I thought I wouldn’t even be able to complete a mile. Instead I did 3 miles easily. I was in better aerobic conditioning – despite not running for 8 months!

Reason #4: You’ll Push Yourself

When you push yourself with high intensity training, and have to stop and breath heavily to catch your breath, you’re telling your lungs you need more oxygen. Hence, your training your lungs and heart to do some actual work.

Reason #5: You’ll Breathe Better

As you age, you steadily lose your lung capacity – or the ability of your lungs to supply oxygen to the rest of your body. By the time you’re 70 years old, you’ll lose 50% of your lung capacity. You can prevent this by sticking to high intensity cardio.

It’s Time to Choose some Better Cardio Options

So now that you’ve realized that excessive distance cardio may not be optimal for your health and fitness needs, it’s time switch things up with some high intensity workouts. First, lets take a look at some better, high intensity cardio options:

Jump Roping – Start off with basic jump roping and slowly learn how to do tricks such as double unders and cross overs. Jump roping is not only a great cardio workout which gets your heart rate up, but it’s also a lot of fun.

Shadow Boxing – I started shadowboxing while I was trying to improve my punching and kicks for Karate. I soon found it to be a great cardio workout and have been performing shadowboxing workouts ever since. All you need to do is put on some great music, and pretend you’re Rocky Balboa.

Sledgehammer Swings – This one takes some practice and technique. I’ve showed the workout to a few friends and they have not liked it. However, I still think grabbing a sledgehammer and hitting a tire is a great workout.

Sprinting – Sprinting is hard, and I don’t do it enough. But it’s one of these easiest forms of high intensity cardio to learn, but not the easiest to perform. All you need to do is choose a distance and run as fast as humanely possible.

How to Organize your Workouts

Method #1: Choose one Exercise and Do it.

The first method is that you can just choose one of the four cardio options listed above, and just go for 20-30 minutes. For jump roping, shadowboxing, and sledgehammer swings, the suggestion is to train with a 3 minute on, 1 minute off schedule.

Meaning that you perform the activity for 3 straight minutes, then rest for a minute. Repeat for as many rounds as you’d like. You can also use shorter intervals once you’ve learned how to perform high intensity jump roping techniques.

With shadowboxing, towards the end of a workout I’ll just trying to punch as fast as I can for 30-60 seconds. This can be your high intensity interval workout, where you try to punch all out for 30 seconds, followed by a 15-20 second rest.

For sprinting, beginners should just sprint all out for around 40 yards, then rest until they recover. Work up to around 10 sprints within a workout, then strive to improve your recovery time.

Method #2: Choose Two Exercises and Superset Them

Here’s a cardio workout I love doing: Alternate between jump roping and shadow boxing. You can set this up in a number of ways. I usually just do 3 rounds of 3 minutes work, 1 minute rest for each exercise. This is a bit difficult for sprinting, especially for beginners.

Advanced trainees can try alternating between sprinting and jump roping, shadowbox boxing, or sledgehammer swings. Yet another option is to alternate between intense cardio and bodyweight exercises such as pushups, pullups and squats.

For advanced trainees who can perform double unders with a jump rope, trying alternating between 20 double unders and 10 pushups. Work up to 10 rounds, then either change up the exercises or add repetitions. The possibilities are endless.

The main point is that if doing one cardio exercises per session starts to get too boring, then try alternating between two cardio exercises – or try alternating between a cardio exercise and a bodyweight exercise.

Method #3: Perform Three or More Exercises in a Circuit

You know I was getting to this. The final step is to just perform full circuits of cardio movements. Try combining shadowboxing, jump roping, and sledgehammer swings together in circuits. We can take the bodyweight training idea from the second method, and expand it to include dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells.

Combine a variety of movements and implements with your cardio exercises. What you’re essentially doing is blurring the lines between cardio and strength training. When you combine cardio and strength training in this manner, you will be dropping fat and increasing lean muscle mass at the same time.

I personally enjoy these kinds of workouts because they make me a better athlete. When you’re playing football, soccer, or practicing martial arts, you will be going head to head against other opponents, plus you’ll be moving and twisting your body in a variety of directions.

When you play sports, you combine cardio and strength training. So, why not do the same for your workouts?

I’m not asking you to completely end your aerobic cardio routines. I do, however, want you to cut down on them and try out some harder routines. See what happens.

If you want more information on high intensity home training, then you should check out Gladiator Body Workout. Gladiator Body Workout is a fitness program developed by Coach Eddie Lomax.

It uses high intensity training to help you drop fat, build lean muscle mass, and improve strength all in the comfort of your own home. All you need is a pair of dumbbells and your bodyweight.

Interval Training is a great intensity technique which helps you blur the lines between cardio and strength training. I personally love combining cardio and strength training because it saves me time. I no longer have to perform separate cardio and strength training workouts.

Actually, I need to stop using the word cardio. It’s not cardio, it’s Energy Systems Training (EST). EST is all about improving the way your body uses nutrients to fuel strenuous physical activity. In other words, train your heart and lungs to help you fuel your workouts.

I’ve posted lots of bodyweight workouts on this website over the past two years. Instead of using the search feature, you can now grab all the workouts through just one post. The following is a list of all the bodyweight workouts I’ve published on this site:

Just completed my first workout using the exercises I learned from Bodyweight Exercise Revolution. My first reaction was that I was surprised by how inflexible I was. I’ve been relying too much on pushups, pullups, and squats to get the job done.

It’s time to throw your gym membership out the door. In a bad economy, you need to cut back where you can. Exercising at home is probably the best way to save a whole bunch of money and get into great shape!

What are my Cardio Options?

Performing cardio at home is very easy. You don’t need to purchase any fancy equipment at all. The following are some cardio activities you can perform with limited to no equipment:

Shadowboxing

This is an activity that professional boxers use to train for their fights. It requires standing in front of a mirror and basically boxing yourself. They usually practice footwork and punching. However, you can shadowbox practically anywhere just by throwing some punches in the air while bouncing side to side.

Jump roping

A jump rope shouldn’t cost you more than $15. Just the way you were when you were little, just start skipping rope. Eventually, you want to learn some techniques such as doubleunders and crossovers. These techniques will really get your heart rate up and give you a great cardio workout.

Running

Running is the basic cardio choice for most people. Now, I’m talking about running, not jogging. This shouldn’t be an easy run. If you’re only going to run a while, then really run a mile. Try to run that mile as fast as possible.

Calisthenics

Calisthenics are those exercises you used to do in your school gym class. They include jumping jacks, windmills, and a variety of other heart pumping movements. You can do circuits of jump roping and running in place for an intense cardio workout.

Sprinting

Sprinting is running all out within a short distance. You can start out by just sprinting from one end of the block to the other. Repeat this 10-12 times for a great fat burning workout. Steadily increase the distance until you can do an all out sprint for approximately 400 meters.

In-Home Cardio Workouts for Beginners

Beginners should ease into their in home cardio workouts. You can set up a very basic 3 days per week, 20 minutes per day routine that will help you lose weight. And because I do not want you to become bored with the routine, I want you to choose 3 separate activities for each day.

Make your Cardio Workouts Harder

After a while, basic cardio will become very boring. You can only shadowbox for so long until your body becomes used to the movement. I am against increasing the time of the movement and prefer increase the intensity of the workout.

The following are some of my favorite cardio intensity techniques:

Descending Reps

This technique works great with shadowboxing, jump roping, and calisthenics. Choose two exercises such as jump roping and jumping jacks. What you want to do is create a workout where the repetitions are steadily decreasing after each round.

Tabata

Tabata intervals are where you perform 20 seconds of high intensity training followed by 10 seconds of rest. This is performed best with sprinting, but can also be performed with high intensity jump roping or shadowboxing.

Traditional Tabata is performed for a total of 8 intervals, so the workout lasts 4 minutes long. You can perform just one exercise per day, or include other exercises. Beginners should start off by just performing one exercise per day.

If Tabata Intervals are too hard for you, then you can start off with easier intervals such as 30/60, or 30/30. Start off slow, because Tabata intervals are one of the most brutal exercises out there.

One of the best ways to help you with your intervals is to use the GymBoss Interval Timer. It costs just $19.95, and you can program it to help you keep track of any sort of intervals you may use. Click here to grab yours today.

Alternate with Strength Training

Performing cardio movements in a superset fashion with bodyweight or free weight exercises is another great method to help you drop fat really quickly. You get both the cardio and strength benefit with these workouts.

Setting up this workout is very easily. All you need to do is choose one cardio movement, and one bodyweight or dumbbell exercise and alternate between them the way you would perform regular supersets.

Doing Cardio without Doing Cardio

Now it’s time change your mind set. That last technique there, alternating with strength training and cardio is only scratching the surface when it comes to creating cardio workouts without doing cardio. The thing that most people don’t realize is that Cardio is short for the word “Cardiorespiratory.”

In short, you’re training your heart. So as long as you keep your heart rate up, in a way, you’re performing cardio. The cardio effect disappears when you rest too long and let your heart rate return to normal. If you rest for a very short time between two or more strength training exercises, then you will never need to do actual cardio ever again!

Remember one thing: no matter how great a fitness program is, you will never get results from it if it’s not fun. You workouts need to be exciting and challenging. So you need to choose something that you truly enjoy doing.

Aerobic exercise is boring. Boring things don’t interest me (because they’re boring). You might come across the best training program in the history of fitness programs, but if it’s boring, then it’s not going to work for you. You need a workout that gets you excited and keeps you challenged so that you can actually progress with your workouts.

The best way to make your cardio workouts more challenging is to perform bodyweight and dumbbell cardio workouts. Cardio is basically elevating your heart rate. So why not combine cardio with strength training by performing bodyweight and dumbbell exercises at a high intensity level?

Imagine workouts that are so intense that you feel like you’ve been hit by a storm after completing them. You feel like your insides are about to land on the ground beneath you. No matter how much water you drink, it’s just doesn’t seem be enough. And the scariest part – your heart rate just won’t return to normal!

You’re about to learn three simple steps you can take to truly take your Bodyweight and Dumbbell training to the next level: